Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Barbara van Schewick is a Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering

Marvin Ammori is a leading First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert. He was instrumental to the adoption of network neutrality rules in the US and abroad–having been perhaps the nation’s leading legal advocate advancing network neutrality–and also instrumental to the defeat of the SOPA and PIPA copyright/censorship bills.

Valarie Kaur is a Non-Residential Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She is a lawyer, documentary filmmaker, and interfaith organizer who helps communities tell their stories and organize for social change. She has made award-winning films and led multimedia campaigns on civil rights issues: hate crimes, racial profiling, gun violence, marriage equality, immigration detention, and solitary confinement.

Emily Baxter is a research associate for Women's Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, focusing on women's and families' economic security, women's leadership, and work-family balance. She previously worked as the special assistant for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center. In the fall of 2012, Emily was a field organizer for President Obama’s re-election campaign near her hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania.

The presidential campaign of 2016 thankfully – and we can only hope officially – ended this evening. As of when this article was posted, there are no reports of widespread cyberattacks or other digital interference against state voting systems. Of course, since votes are still being tallied, we’re not in the clear yet. But current indications are that this was a fairly uneventful election, from a cybersecurity perspective at least.

The Center for Internet and Society just wrapped up its Law, Borders, and Speech Conference. We had an amazing line-up of speakers and a great set of topics -- the event was a blast, and we are getting enthusiastic feedback from newly minted Internet jurisdiction nerds and old hands alike.

The extended DDoS attacks over the past few days that triggered widespread outages and Internet congestion are more than a mere annoyance. Rather, these instances have proven to be increasingly sophisticated efforts to strike at core networking protocols—the infrastructure that makes the Internet operate—to render large portions of the network inoperable or inaccessible. Perhaps the greatest irony of these complex attacks has been the fact that they have been conducted on the backs of some of the dumbest devices out there—the so-called "smart" devices that make up the Internet of Things (IoT).

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Today, the Open Internet Order becomes effective. Adopted after a year of national debate, the order codifies “net neutrality” — the principle that keeps the Internet an open and democratic space. Specifically, it bans carriers like Comcast and Verizon from blocking and slowing down websites at will, or charging sites extra fees to reach people faster.

Today, after more than a year of national debate, the Open Internet Order goes into effect. The Order keeps the Internet an open and democratic space free from undue corporate control. Business leaders, start-up innovators, and economists widely praise the Order as win for the economic growth.

But protecting the open Internet is not just sound policy -- it's a moral imperative.

The recent leak of a secret chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement system (ISDS) is getting many people on both the left and the right upset. Left-wingers don’t like a system in which corporations can push back against government regulations. Right-wingers don’t like a system where U.N.-affiliated tribunals can overturn U.S. law.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

"Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the world wide web, is calling on regulators in Europe to protect net neutrality and "save the open internet." In a letter released this week, Berners-Lee, Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, and Harvard law professor Larry Lessig urged European regulators to implement guidelines that would close

"Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web, has pleaded with EU regulators to sew up the loopholes in the bloc’s new net neutrality rules, which aim to maintain a level playing field on the Internet.

Berners-Lee, along with activist academics Lawrence Lessig and Barbara van Schewick, published an open letter to citizens, lawmakers and regulators, declaring there were “four days to save the open Internet in Europe.”

"Europe only has a few days left to ensure that its member countries are actually protected by realnet neutrality rules. As we've been discussing, back in October the European Union passed net neutrality rules, but they were so packed with loopholes to not only be useful, but actively harmful in that they effectively legalize net neutrality violations by large telecom operators.

"World Wide Web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee has joined with others on an open letter to European regulators and lawmakers warning them they have four days to save the open Internet in Europe, including by banning zero rating plans.

Berners-Lee was weighing in before the end of the public comment period (July 18) on guidelines on implementing and applying EU net neutrality law, which the European Parliament adopted last fall, pointing to what he and others saw as loopholes that it was crucial to close.

This year’s Security of Things Forum will feature two tracks: Leaders and Hackers that are intended to balance high-level talks and panel discussions focused on the operational and policy impacts of securing the Internet of Things with a variety of hands-on demonstrations, tutorials and granular “shop talks” on everything to IoT device hacking to protocols and platform as a service options, to securing IoT devices in enterprises and critical infrastructure settings.